as I say thank you ever so much for joining us today and a massive welcome to Brian who will be talking us and uh through the retrofit qualifications the Landscapes and looking at some of the micr credentials um the reason that we're here today and the reason why we've got the opportunity to do do and develop this work is for the last two years we at SLP have been working with um the mayor uh around the green skills academy Hub and how we support our training providers and our employer organizations to develop a curriculum to respond to the challenges and opportunities within the green economy and we have had some particular Focus around retrofit because we were happily successful in securing a bit of funding from the greater Southeast Net Zero Hub supported by the de uh department for energy Security in Net Zero and helping to develop retrofit skills pilots and that looking at qualifications but also broader skills across the sector and across partners and stakeholders and looking at the systemwide challenge of retrofit and how we support um our businesses to take opportunity and Commercial advantage of the approximate 17 billion pounds worth of um investment that can be made over the next 10 years but also as a response to the opportunity of retrofitting our 635,000 properties that we anticipate will require 66,000 person years and the biggest challenge for us to develop that is around skills and making sure that not only we encourage a new talent supp talent Pipeline and supply chain into the construction and built environment sector but that we also think and ensure that we have the skills required within our existing trades and supply chain to make sure we can actually deliver on the retrofit requirements across Southwest London um this is not just a Southwest London challenge this is a national Challenge and we've been working with Partners such as the national retrofit Hub with our burough colleagues with our training providers universities Fe Colleges and Schools to to tackle and try and support the supply of skill Talent so I'd like to hand over to Brian who's going to take you through um some of those things and and talk about some of the opportunities that they've been developing um as I say please use a chat but also there'll be opportunity for questions at the end thank you okay thanks thanks um hi colleagues um my name's Brian horn um I'm the director of qualifications at uh ocn London uh just a quick background um to me um I've worked in the construction sector for many years um I was involved uh working for CI ITB for far too many years to remember um and I've also developed retrofit qualifications um in uh and and and also micr credentials um in the past sort of uh eight to 10 years of my career before moving to ocn London I was a uh vocational qualifications director at offall which is the government regulator regulating qualifications so what I'm going to talk about today is um give an overview of qualifications and then go through uh more specifically some of the skills requirements within the Retro SE retrofit sector uh and then finish off with a an analysis just a quick sort of wiiz through of the type of Micro credentials that we've been developing in this landscape uh and how we think they can make a difference so three main parts to the presentation today um looking um to begin at uh qualifications um clearly what uh the qualification structure uh allows for is both entry into retrofit careers uh but also progression uh within the sub sector um so looking at qualifications itself and excuse this sort of rather sort of basic intro but I think whenever you start talking about qualifications it's always helpful to start looking at what the rqf framework looks like and and and this is describ and this is probably the best diagram and I remember back in the day we were trying to draw this when I worked at off qual it took us ages we had we had tins on shells we had packets of beans we had loads of different analogies and the one that they came up with we came up with at the time was the idea of books so qualifications a little bit like books on shells so you can do very similar qualifications at very low levels you can do bigger qualifications at different levels small bite-size qualifications Etc um so it's worth just thinking that through as as as as we talk about qualifications the different types and levels in in in the construction sector as you probably mostly aware um level two normally equates to job ready um level one Learners probably aren't job ready um and then level three is beginning to look at skills or supervisory level um and the way I always look at it is you look at carpentry and joinery and door hanging at level two if you were hanging a door on a building site you'd actually need supervision um whereas level three um you you you you'd be pretty much competent and being able to uh um Hodor without supervision so it's that type of thing level of Independence and also the level of content technical content um going into the sector itself um there are qualifications available um and I've deliberately taken off the awarding organizations here because I didn't want to advertise any particular product so it's relatively neutral um but there are qualifications available at level two and level three um level two qualifications um are are are quite simple access qualifications into the world of of of retrofit and they're there for probably operatives trades people um who would want to start in retrofit or or or who perhaps have got a little bit of retrofit experience um but they want to work into a more professional role so you've got level two qualifications out there you've also got then quite specific roles at level three and above um based on the particular job roles within within the retrofit sub sector so for instance um the Pas documents um the uh the retrofit dwellings for improved Energy Efficiency um they specify uh this is a department for energy security and Net Zero offer documents um but they specify particular roles so there is a level three certificate for retrofit assessors um and that's all about understanding being able to go in to understand a building structure um look at the occupancy um and look at what you want to do with a building so it assesses a building for the type of work so that's quite a technical role so you'll find that most of these particular roles attached to the p definitions tend to be at level three when you go up into the higher level roles um so uh if you go into uh coordination and risk management so the whole coordination of a retrofit project um and managing it then this role tends to equate to a higher level site management role so a construction site manager um would be on level five level six you you are talking about putting the well you don't put your hard hat behind you um but they're the guys and girls who start to wear the suits and ties um so these are the these are the people who will be doing the planning so you're up to level five level five on the um sort of rqf level equates to um you're you're up in the sort of lower University level um hnd type courses in terms of the level of demand um and and these this qualification the level five diploma is is a high level one with quite a high level technical uh demand and it also demands quite a level of people's skills and and and and managing uh staff and and teams of Staff um so that's why it's it's it's it's a level five and it's quite a demanding qualification so turning now to job roles um and again I'm focusing primarily on the retrofit sector um but the P framework as you're probably probably aware defines a number of job roles um it starts at the advisor in terms of going into a building as uh and and and giving advice as to to what can be done the more technical assessor role uh where uh obviously a more detailed of assessment of of what what's what work is going to be undertaken and what schedules are going to be used and over what time period is the retrofit exercise going to be carried out you've then got a coordinator role whose role it is very specifically to um as it says on the tin really coordinate the work um often times with a big building you will have phases of different work so you'll have the electrical work going on um you will have um the uh sort of Plumbing work being stripped out uh and you'll have a raft of different projects um if you did everything sequentially for a full retrofit it would take a very long time um so for a properly assessed and coordinated retrofit exercise a big building let's say a bit a large you know a large sort of Victorian era dwelling if you're going to retrofit that um then you know you would have about five or six current work streams all going along at the same time and that's the importance of the coordinator to make sure that everything's in and out at the right time the designer um again designs uh the the work in terms of what do we actually need where do we want things plac in what particular pieces of kit do we want introduce it into the house and then of course you've got your retrofit installers um who tend to be trades people more generally um you tend to have people from uh electricians plumbers who who who've who've developed skills particularly in retrofit um and then of course you've got the final uh role which is the retrofit evaluator who has a front end role to look at the performance of a building and then evaluate at the end to be able to show that the retrofit activity has actually delivered the improvements that you want it to so those roles are quite specific and quite tightly defined um and as I said just to talk through um uh the importance of a retrofit coordinator is that if you wanted a project to be eligible for any Public Funding um then a retrofit coordinator will Ure ensure that the project aders to pass 2035 principles um So within the pass framework there are uh a set of principles as to how the work should be should be carried out um and obviously you need a properly qualified director fit coordinated to do the work to be eligible for Public Funding so um this is a sort of a a snapshot um o of the roles as I've just described them um and it starts to pick out here the sort of things that would be demanded and asked of of of these individuals um so an assessor um would be doing an energy performance certificate survey so they will be asked to do that um a retrofit designer would normally be um a highly skilled typically an architect um and then evaluated as a whole raft of a data uh expectation from that particular role so um in terms of the skill set um obviously that's a sort of Highline highlight view of the retrofit activity reducing energy consumption um and maintaining uh High highly important sustainability aspects to the work and it's about making uh existing structures upgraded and improved to make them much more uh energy efficient and what you'll find is that in any typical housing stock in in in a city you'll find that virtually 80% of them could benefit from retrofit um so it's a highly efficient way of of of of minimizing energy use from a from a set of houses in a particular set of uh uh neighborhoods so looking at the skills um what I've tended to do and again I'm going now into sort of qualification mode and I'm talking from my own personal sort of background as to what I would start to do when I was looking at a qualification so for an advisor they need to know these things um they need to be um knowledgeable they need to be familiar with building codes so already here if I was when I'm pulling together the qualifications and this is this is how we built these qualifications and we still do um a learning outcome would be that a learner needs to understand and be aware of the various building codes relating to Energy Efficiency um and they need communication skills uh and and and a whole raft of other things um if you look at the apprentiship Frameworks there isn't a a retrofit apprenti SHP uh per se um but they they have follow this Sim sort of knowledge skills and behavior pattern um an installer for instance needs to have these knowledges uh knowledge sets um they need to be aware of a wide range of things and also for the installer as I said before um in many cases it would be an existing plumber or an electrician so they would have experience of using the tools necessary to do the job in a retrofi exercise an assessor again you can see there and again here the ability to use energy modeling software um and and and a quite broad knowledge base for an assessor so talking about micr credentials then I mean clearly there is a qualification landscape that covers those roles so if you go back to those roles there are specific qualifications um but what we found and this is what I'm going to highlight in the next uh 10 minutes or so is that um micr credentials small bite-sized learning learning opportunities can be ideal ways of providing the skills and the knowledge that existing operatives actually need so rather than look at a broad qualification if a plumber's coming on site for a particular piece of work um then you could potentially deliver a short sharp training activity to bring them up to speed on the retrofit world what it means for them and how it can apply to their specific trade so it's an ideal way of delivering upskilling without uh a massively um large qualification that someone would have to take time off work to study so just going through the types of uh sort of micr credentials that we've developed um at ocn London is we've developed a range of digital Badges and most of these uh micr credentials that we've developed are linked in into online courses um and they include um attendance so it might well be it's attendance a professional event it might be an element of CPD that a Learners attended uh and taking part in so there's an attendance badge um there's also a set of digital badges um and this is one that we've developed so train tutors to deliver renewable energy um so again again these are typically 10 to 30 or 40 hours of tuition um and normally as I've said they will be online so it will be about 10 hours 12 15 hours of of of online study um very similar to some of the open University sort of bite-size learning opportunities um but the advantage of these badges is what we do is we quality assure the content underneath them so we made sure that the learning outcomes and the assessment criteria and the assessment methodology and the delivery materials all match up and we also consult with experts to make sure that what we're doing um is uh legitimate it carries weight so not only do we put our our our mark on it our brand as a regulated awarding organization but we also work with partners and I'll talk a little bit about Partners in a little while but um that's a typical digital badge um normally on completion of learning what we do is we generate these via email um so these badges can be sort of uh ping to Learners and they can be added into things like uh curriculum VVS you can put them onto LinkedIn you can put them onto Facebook etc etc so there's a whole raft of opportunities to keep these and they're maintained on platform as digital badges for Learners to access um what we have also done is developed a certification badge so that when a learner has reached a certain level they've reached maybe five or six particular badges they've done five four or five aspects of retrofit we can build and we can put together a final uh certificate and what we can do on the back of this also is we can actually build a qualification onto this so that not only do the micr credentials Stack Up um but they will allow you at the end of maybe sort of five or six microc credentials to achieve a certificate so we can build in qualifications on the back of this um and that shows that there's as I say there's a Learner Journey this one was about artificial intelligence but nevertheless it it builds to to the point that having got all of the individual badges a learner is on a pathway uh and when they've uh when they've completed the pathway then they will achieve the certificate and then what we're doing with this particular pathway is we are converting it now to a qualification so a learner after and they can do it at their own pace so they can do the the individual units and then they can achieve the qualification at the end of it so in terms of work um over the past uh year particularly we've worked both with South London um but we've also worked with the Bim Academy we've worked with supply chain sustainability we've worked with local London and we've worked with the citb and a range of other partners so we've worked with a range of organizations to develop these micr credentials um and these are some of the some of the things that we've done in the past year so we've developed a suite around digit construction uh building information modeling um we've done some badges around the green economy which we've developed with University of East London and with the supply chain sustainability we've done a whole uh School we've done a whole uh batch of retrofit and green skills um many qualifications um that uh cover a whole range of things as you can see there carbon Rec uh carbon reporting uh sustainable procurement Etc um so as I said building information modeling that was one that was uh there was a suite of that um and and and and this takes you through a whole raft of uh teaches you about the standards applying beam con Concepts right the way through to Kobe and a whole raft of of other microc credentials so doing this Suite um gives you a pretty comprehensive understanding of building information modeling so in terms of the process um basically how we do this is we work in the initial stages with Partners um we develop the phases in the deliverables and then eventually we deliver a set of products um and we've been doing this at pace so we've in the past um year we've developed that broad range of micr credential that we talked about earlier so this is the Bim one um in this one we worked with new College we were the Bim Academy we develop the micr credentials we develop the content um we develop the micr credentials badge designs the metadata uh and at the end of the day we had a full program of micr credentials uh developed and builds um so the outcomes uh we got the designs uh we got an online platform hosting them and we're now working with delivery Partners to look at support in terms of implementation so how can these uh learning opportunities be made real uh and we've also been developing a wide range of promotional materials that go with them so this is the uh retrofit one that we did um and you can see that that it I've taken out names but uh normally this would be it would it would have an individual's name and it would say when it was issued um and it also has the badges of Partners so we are currently developing some with South London which I'll talk about in a minute or two um but you can see there the partners are all there and this badge can be verified so a learner can go online or an employer can go online uh and they can check that this individual has received this badge and that they've gone through this particular course so that's a typical badge um what are we doing in South London well in South London we're again looking at retrofit um tomorrow we've got a a careers event um looking at Green jobs and skills uh and methods of progressing into and within the industry um we're developing course materials uh We've started doing that already with South terms colleges group and the University of rampton um and the idea from this work is that we will develop a complete Suite of qualifications um what we're going to try and do with the South London uh retrofit qualifications is to give them a Southland and flavor um so rather than have a sort of a you know bug standard this is what it is this is a job rolls this is how it works really try and get an understanding of how retrofit might be important in a specific region such as South London and looking at the specific borers if we can if we can develop small qualific ifications that actually Target specific buroughs and say you within the area within this particular burough we've looked at local local building stock we've analyzed and we've come up with these sorts of Assessments and that's the sort of thing that we're doing with souths and University of rampton at the moment we're trying to take it to that local level but there'll be really great qualifications and I'm sure they' be really helpful for people who take them so just to for summarize then um what do ocn Lindon bring to the table well I think um you know obviously we've got significant experience over 30 years experience of building qualifications um so what we bring to the table in terms of the ocn London brand is the confidence that this is these qualifications have been developed by a regulated awarding organization um and we can also set uh micr credentials against broader product offers so we can set against qualifications uh we can build it against a broad range of different offers um we can also set them against qualifications from other aing organizations which is probably something that I shouldn't really be saying but we can do that so you know if there is a particular qualification from Pearson for example or city and gills then we can develop microcredentials that actually provide access and support access for for individuals who might want to do that so I'll finish at that um I was always aiming at about 30 minutes if that's okay Polly no that's absolutely brilliant Brian thank you very much there are just a couple of questions in the chat um so just to pick those up um from from David Randall um yeah the what are the entry qualifications are the prerequisites if any um in order to enter a level three qualification in in terms of retrofit yes I I mean the actual the actual qualifications themselves tend to say experience in reasonably you know a similar trade so you'd expect a level you know it depends on the role that you wanted to do but you'd be expected to have a level two in something similar or an understanding of that level and the construction industry at that level um so that's that that's what I would be looking for and that's how the qualifications are structured they're they're not very specific in the sense that you have to do level two in X Y or Zed so providing you're capable of doing the course uh and you what you tend to find is for the level three roles you tend to find that they are people who've been on the trades I mean they're described classically as the biblical trades so you tend to find that you've got level level two uh carpentry and joinery or plumbers who would would be going into this area can I do a follow up on that Polly just G to say from from our experience that particularly around the retrofit specific qualifications that in actual fact um Al although if you were a learner and and and going on a course you know there's no kind of academic prerequisite no the ACT you need to understand the fabrication of a building and um many providers are actually insisting on two or three years experience of working in the trade before embarking on that kind of qualification so what these aren't necessarily are entrylevel qualifications and I think I you know I we've put um a colleague of ours on the domestic retrofit assessor training so they have a better understanding but because you have to do uh practical um you have to provide practical assessments and experience it's it's it is quite challenging so you do you do have to have have had some experience or at least that's what the good quality training providers are are telling us yeah indeed and I I think just to support that poly what I would say is that um again I'll wear my off call Hab that I used to wear anyway um is that the expectation on all training providers is they they properly assess the Learners suitability to do one of these qualific ations so um a training provider would would in order to get a proper completion rate on these they would want people with with two or three years experience in the industry um the cost of employing them it's difficult I'm picking up the questions in the chat David um it it and I think Matthews answered it as well um uh you know it it's how long is the piece of string really I I you know it depends on it depends on whether you've got public money or not but um you don't need a massive great in many instances you can go into building and do a small retrofit project that doesn't cost that much you know simple installation of PVC windows and a few other things you can do quite quickly in a building at relatively low cost so you you might not need the full range of assessment in in the way that it's defined um but the in order to get Public Funding then it does tend to have to adhere to pass requirements but as Matthew said if privately funded you don't need them there's another question um I think it's will these digital badges eventually be smart contracts on a blockchain what we're doing what we're looking to do and that's from yourself David what we're looking to do is to make them as flexible as we can so we've at the moment at the moment um I don't see any reason why they can't we are building them up into a structure at the moment we've got about 30 or 30 of them in the green and digital sorry the green and retrofit sector so I think over the next six months we're taking an overview uh and what we want them to be is as flexible as we possibly can I mean ideally what we don't want to do is under cut qualifications but for to to to get someone with two or three years experience in the biblical trades and provide them with significant the amount of upskilling particularly if it's a privately funded job to come in and do some retrofit work that will be an ideal place for for these micr credentials and I think the F there's another question is who is assessing the teacher qualification and I would it so from my experience it's generally the awarding organizations that will assess competency and and the training providers themselves in terms of ensuring that the the staff that are delivering the qualifications are qualified to do that but happy for you Brian to say yes or no M yes yeah I mean what we will what we will what we do with our micro cadential is we do uh sort of a center approval process whereby we will check that the center has the ability to um properly say that a candidate has got a particular skill set um so we'll go in and check and and again it's very similar to the sort of citb Industry standard requirements that if if you are assessing someone at a level you have at least the level and above to be able to make a judgment that the learner can do what they say they can do um so we do make sure that the um the assessors um have the right skill levels to to to make these safe Awards and and Brian there's another question around the microc credentials could the cost also be aimed at teach teachers CPD and upskilling for teachers they can they can indeed they can and I mean what we have been doing is we've been developing train the trainers uh so we've been developing qualifications for uh green skills in particular whereby we're looking at trainers trainers and one of the ones that we've done is is on heat heat uh air pump air sourced heat pumps so with heat pumps we've actually developed qualifications for people to actually train the trainer so to speak um what I'd say at the moment is if if if colleagues on the call have a particular interest in a qualif in a micro credential that they would like us to see develop first thing is just give me a bell give me a call I think my contact details are available will be available uh and we can talk it through with you so if you think well actually it would be really good to have this um then we can work with you to develop these um but we are as I say we're trying to develop a a large suite um do they involve onsite assessments um again uh you know I I I sort of come from an O OSAP background where uh on-site assessments are really helpful um if if osat is a is an assessment mechanism that would help deliver then yes you can do via osat you can do via on site if it works for the batch if it works for the micr cadential and I think just it's sort of important to say that the reason why we you know we been working on these micr credentials and we we welcome those is that we've spoken to a lot ofes Federation of Master Builders citb and they have said that trying to engage a supply chain more broadly has been incredibly difficult and actually these micr credentials are really useful in a pathway to then extending their learning and doing some more um you know higher level and involved training and learning because at the moment there so much work and no capacity with or stretch within the sector that you know committing to Long qualifications has been really really challenging and so if there was anything that we could do through micro credentials to really start to engage the supply chain then um then please could we do some of that work and this is where our kind of Interest came from really which was you know working with the sector and them saying well this is what we really need and actually don't get me wrong I don't think it's ever been a quick fix I think this was all about how we Peak Interest and how we start to ensure that our businesses have that commercial advantage and have the skills they need to deliver and I think there's a sector concern that that you know we're not going to be ready but we can see that this is going we're going to need more people to be ready but at the moment they're not and and and whilst we can absolutely influence the C the current talents of supply chain that's coming through our Fe and H sector at the moment we've got an opportunity to still influence them I think it's the existing Workforce that we're really trying to engage with some of this work yeah and and totally agree with that Polly I mean what we are also doing to sort of hopefully improve accessibility and update for these type of uh micr credentials is we're working in partnership with a CIP C citb at the moment and what they we wherever possible we're trying to align them so that they're in scope so where they are in scope for grant funding um we can map them very well to Grant entitled training um so the idea is that they will have um for those who pay the levy um they will be able to draw down citb grant for these qualifications as well um so we we're sort of act as I say having worked at citb I know how to fit them into the scope and what we've been trying to do is make make sure that they meet the scope requirements so that they can attract Levy which is again helpful and in South London we're one of the pilots that means that that citb do all the paperwork and pay for all the qualifications there's no int they're trying to remove the administration for particularly small small organizations um so means that they can access a list of free funding and rather than having to pay for it and then get refund they're actually paying citb are paying for it directly on with approved providers so there is a real opportunity to make a difference particularly around qualifications in South London and it's you know how we support our existing trades to be ready and prepared for um for retrofitting and retrofitting South London there a massive appetite across our our leadership so across the leaders and the chief execs across the South London partnership burus to really push move on this we have some work coming up over the next few weeks that really going to try and cement the retrofit cluster in South London and and really identify the other pieces of collective work that we need to do and I'm conscious we're coming towards the end of 40 of the 45 minutes thank you so much Brian it's been really interesting to hear about your journey and how and how we link that to um some of the demands and challenges and opportunities that we've got in in South London and there's one final question that David's Scott will will will allow him who's deciding how many P qualifications there will be and how many more in the pipeline so I yeah I I I think it's got I don't think there'll be any more in the pipeline in the sense of job roles because the qualifications defined in the pass document are linked to def job roles so there is a limit to how many job roles there are how many qualifications there are it might be that different a organ different awarding organizations offer different qualifications for the same job rooll um but in essence there will only be the job rolles that we've described and I I think and that that has is not uh is a is not a is a competency is a post is a qualification is that's right pass pass is a framework to say that if you're going to do retrofit these are the job roles these are the competencies and this is the sort of way in which a retrofi activity should be carried out so really having divided the job roles the qualifications were developed on the back of those job roles um and and the you know um as I say I think it's as as Polly said it's a competency framework so the answer is there are no more in the pipeline there might be different flavors of them from different awarding organizations but there are no new ones that are going to emerge out of out the woodwork brilliant thank you I mean it's obviously a very hot topic and um and there's there's obviously a lot to say um Georgina's uh Dro Brian's email in the chat if any Partners would like to talk to Brian then please do get in touch this web this webinar will be available on our website along with the slides so if you um would like to share this with colleagues as soon as it's up we will let you know but thank you so much for your contribution and thank you so much for joining us today and we really hope that you find this useful there's the uh link to our website in the um in the chat as well the website is there as a resource for everyone it's our One-Stop shop it's going to be where we try and bring all of this information together for everyone for our trades for our practitioners and we're really working on building that out and we'll be um adding more information there we've got a whole range of events coming up over the next few weeks and months and while we deliver for um Department of energy security next zero and a greater Southeast next zero Hub um but this is um absolutely um the start it's not the end so we're really um thankful and grateful for all your contributions and then we look forward to seeing you at some more events over the next few weeks thank you ever so much thank you you thanks byebye bye